[Python-porting] Recommended Python version?

[Jesus Cea]

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On 15/06/10 13:59, Shane Kerr wrote:
> However, we have concerns because very few systems ship with Python 3
> "out of the box" still. We think that early adopters - and later all
> adopters - may be put off by this requirement.
> 
> We're considering back-porting the project from 3.1 to 2.7, and then
> maintaining a version of the software that works with both the older 2.x
> and the newer 3.x series. Does this make any sense?
> 
> Do you have any other recommendations regarding Python 2 vs. Python 3?

I don't write python 3 code yet, myself. So far, I use "2to3" to support
3.x.

That said, in your case I would say:

1. People living in the edge can compile Python 3.x themselves. In fact
they were compiling new BIND releases by hand until now. I do!.
Compiling python 3 is not mre complex than compiling current BIND 9.x.

2. People that don't want to mess with low level stuff is going to use
(talking about linux) a distribution. Any modern linux distribution
supports dependencies, so python 3 would be a dependency. The package
manager would download BIND 10 *AND* python 3.x, automatically. For
instance, in Ubuntu 10.04:

"""
jcea at ubuntu:~$ python3
The program 'python3' is currently not installed.  You can install it by
typing:
sudo apt-get install python3-minimal
"""

So, under Ubuntu it would be pain-free.

3. For "old" systems with no dependency management, the sysadmin is not
going to install BIND 10 anyway. Not for a long time.

If you don't need any "unported" python library, I would recommend you
to stick to Python 3.

PS: Having a high profile project as BIND using Python 3 would be a
great push to python 3 mindshare.

- -- 
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